As airplane for beaming TV to Cuba sits, we still pay for it [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

As airplane for beaming TV to Cuba sits, we still pay for it
By David A. Farenthold
THE WASHINGTON POST Wednesday September 4, 2013 6:56 AM

CARTERSVILLE, Ga. — At an airfield in rural Georgia, the U.S. government pays a contractor $6,600 a month for a plane that doesn’t fly.

The plane is a 1960s turboprop with an odd array of antennas on its back end and the name of a Cuban national hero painted on its tail. It can fly, but it doesn’t. Government orders.

“The contract now is a ‘non-fly’  ” agreement, said Steve Christopher of Phoenix Air Group, standing next to the plane. “That’s what the customer wants.”

The airplane is called “Aero Marti,” and it is stuck in a kind of federal limbo. After two years of haphazard spending cuts in Washington, it has too little funding to function but too much to die.

More:
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/national_world/2013/09/04/as-airplane-for-beaming-tv-to-cuba-sits-we-still-pay-for-it.html